Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

 It's been awhile since I've written any posts. I haven't been out with the camera much lately. I guess I haven't seen too much that I wanted to photograph. The weather has been foul for weeks, rainy, snowy, windy- typical weather for Southeast Alaska in the late fall/early winter. Who really wants to see pictures of cloud shrouded mountains or rain thick seascapes? I started looking back through the archives of my pictures hoping to find something worth while to write about and I came upon this bench from down at the cannery. I remember asking my friend John Kveum about it some time back, but I can't really recall what he told me. I know it's been around for quite a long time. Back in the days when the cannery processed salmon, many a captain or crew hand or maybe cannery worker sat on this weathered bench, knife or fid in hand and decided to leave his mark. I guess there's something in all of us that wants to make a statement or be remembered. Ma...

I'm sure anyone browsing the web, hoping to come across some pictures of Alaska would be sorely dissapointed if they came across this blog post. After all, what does a toilet have to do with Alaska? Well, obviously, we do have toilets here- at least in this part of the state. Up north in some of the more remote villages they still don't have the pleasure of indoor plumbing so they resort to five gallon buckets. When I was on the farm we used outhouses or camp toilets if we were inside for the night and the urge hit. It made for some interesting stories. Everyone who lived there for any length of time had a story or two about the potty. I don't know what is so funny about toilet humor- I guess it's something we can all relate to. I was speaking to my daughter Camille the other day. She was talking to me from inside her bathroom. My grandson is in the process of being potty trained, which, anyone who has ever had kids knows, is quite a big deal. Like many kids, he at fir...